colored man wanted to separate himself from his white neighbors, he
had but to acquire some money, education, and culture, and to live in
accordance. For example, the proudest and fairest lady in the South
could with propriety--and it is what she would most likely do--go to
the cabin of Aunt Mary, her cook, if Aunt Mary was sick, and minister
to her comfort with her own hands; but if Mary's daughter, Eliza, a
girl who used to run round my lady's kitchen, but who has received an
education and married a prosperous young colored man, were at death's
door, my lady would no more think of crossing the threshold of Eliza's
cottage than she would of going into a bar-room for a drink.

I was walking down the street one day with a young man who was born in
Jacksonville, but had been away to prepare himself for a professional
life. We passed a young white man, and my companion said to me: "You
see that young man? We grew up together; we have played, hunted, and
fished together; we have even eaten and slept together; and now since
I have come back home, he barely speaks to me." The fact that the
whites of the South despise and ill-treat the desperate class of
blacks is not only explainable according to the ancient laws of human
nature, but it is not nearly so serious or important as the fact that
as the progressive colored people advance, they constantly widen the
gulf between themselves and their white neighbors. I think that the
white people somehow feel that colored people who have education and
money, who wear good clothes and live in comfortable houses, are
"putting on airs," that they do these things for the sole purpose of
"spiting the white folks," or are, at best, going through a sort
of monkey-like imitation. Of course, such feelings can only cause
irritation or breed disgust. It seems that the whites have not yet
been able to realize and understand that these people in striving to
better their physical and social surroundings in accordance with their